What Are We Reading? (The Human Mind edition)

Posted on August 07 2017

We searched the minds of some of our bookstore elves to bring you our latest book list! This edition introduces self-examining reads that explore the human mind and what it means to feel alive or, sometimes dead to the point you feel like there's no other way than to rise up.

“Hurt, he'll never be hurt — he's made to hurt other people.” — George Eliot, Silas Marner

"People lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off and turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned.”— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“This person mourns the fact that she has ruined her one chance to be loved by everyone; as this person climbs into bed, the weight of this tragedy seems to bear down upon this person’s chest. And it is a comforting weight, almost human in heft. This person sighs. This person’s eyes begin to close, this person sleeps.”— Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

"And the natural path from nullity to greatness is this: forget that you're a gram and feel yourself a millionth part of a ton."— Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

"We humans scorn what is not concrete. We are more easily swayed by a crying baby than by thousands of people dying elsewhere that do not make it into our dining room. The one case is a tragedy, the other a statistic."— Nicholas Nassim Taleb, Antifragile

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy